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Steel production is one of the most energy-intensive industries on demand side. Highly distributed energy resource-penetrated multi-energy microgrids (MEMGs) with combined heat and power (CHP) units can supply both electricity and heat while the by-product coal gases during manufacturing can be reused for onsite power supply. However, there is a lack of coordination between steel production and MEMG operation, and the steelmaking process is not fully modelled. Thus, this paper proposes a three-stage coordinated operation method for steel plant-based MEMGs, aiming to minimize the total operating cost. In this method, the steel production is scheduled weekly-ahead to meet the production demand considering carbon emission reduction. Then, the CHP commitment and day-ahead energy transaction are optimized in a day-ahead stage, while the dispatchable device output and intraday energy transaction are determined hourly-ahead based on uncertainty realizations. Accordingly, the steel production is modelled as continuous and discontinuous processes in parallel or series. To tackle the uncertainty of renewable generation, a scenario-based stochastic optimization method is utilized. Moreover, different carbon prices are applied to investigate their effects on steel production. The results show that the proposed method can decrease the operating cost by 14.33% and 1.45% compared with the other two conventional methods. [Display omitted] • Three-stage steel plant MEMG low-carbon operation coordinated with process optimization. • Generalized continuous/discontinuous process modelling for steel production. • Uncertain intervals of renewable generation tackled with SO and SAA in different stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]